Facing the Storms

Letters To My Daughters

FamilyLife Today® Radio Transcript

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Facing the Storms

Guest: Barbara Rainey

From the series: Letters to My Daughters (Day 1 of 1)

Bob: To be the woman and the wife that God created you to be, you have to know how to walk by faith on the good days and on the dark days. Here’s Barbara Rainey.

Barbara: Most people who have been through suffering—whether it’s shallow, small things or really deep, tragic things—can say, on the other side, “I didn’t enjoy it / I didn’t like it, but I knew God better as a result.” I’ve heard so many people say that. I would say it’s true about us too. We’ve learned more about God in the valleys than we have on the high places and hills in the sunshine.

Bob: This is FamilyLife Today for Monday, April 11th. Our host is the President of FamilyLife®, Dennis Rainey, and I'm Bob Lepine. We’re going to spend time today exploring how a husband and wife can draw closer together and become one when they’re walking in the valley in the path of suffering. Stay with us.

1:00

And welcome to FamilyLife Today. Thanks for joining us. Anybody who has ever been to one of our Weekend to Remember® marriage getaways knows that, on Friday night, as we are getting underway, we spend some time talking about the common potholes that derail/destabilize marriage relationships. There are some things that are pretty standard / pretty common that can cause a marriage to wobble at high speeds.

Dennis: And we begin the conference with a message that is really about five threats to your oneness—five threats to your marriage / five threats to your marriage going the distance over your lifetime.

2:00

Bob: One of those threats is a failure to anticipate the unexpected trials that come into a marriage. It’s not a question of whether unexpected trials will come into a marriage; but “How do you respond when they do?” because all of us are going to hit them; aren’t we?

Dennis: Well, if you think about it—the vows are built / the traditional vows: “…in sickness and in health / in financial success and in also being poor.” I mean, the basis of what we promise, when we establish the marriage covenant, is that we’re going to take the storm head-on. We don’t know what it will be; but we’re pledging to one another to not quit, but to keep on loving, keep on believing, and make our marriage go the distance.

Bob: And we are taking some time this week to talk with your wife Barbara. Welcome back to FamilyLife Today.

Barbara: Thank you, Bob.

3:00

Bob: We’re going to talk about some of those valleys and dark places that the two of you have walked together in 40-plus years of marriage and how you’ve not quit in the midst of that.

Dennis: And what Barbara has done is—she has taken the past—almost ten—years to complete a book to wives called Letters to My Daughters: The Art of Being a Wife that is designed to be what it is. It’s an older woman stepping into the life of a younger woman with sage advice / with seasoned advice—with the advice that comes after four decades of marriage. I love what you’ve done here because, honestly, there are a good number of books out there about being a wife—and there is a lot of fluff / it’s kind of “How to…”—but not really tied into the reality of what women are facing today.

The way this book is constructed—you end it with this subject that Bob’s talking about here—the subject of suffering.

4:00

I guess I’d have to ask you: “Is that because of what you and I have been through in 40/ almost 44 years of marriage?—because we have been through some dark valleys together.

Barbara: Well, that’s why it’s in there; because it has been an integral part of our marriage relationship. It’s in there because I think most brides / most young women get married with some of what I call “fairy tale theology.” They get married thinking that: “Everything is going to be great for us. We’re not going to have difficulties. Yes, there will be some uncomfortable moments, but we’re not going to really have hard stuff. We’re going to be great. We love each other, and everything’s going to be great.”

For those who are Christians—like you and I were when we got married—we also start our marriages out thinking: “You know, we believe in God. If we do it God’s way, it’s going to all be good. We’re not going to have any hard things.” That was how I started our marriage—thinking: “A plus B equals C.

5:00

“If I obey God and I do these things that are in the Bible, then God, therefore, will give us an easy, nice life.”

Bob: So, do you have a new equation now if it’s not “A plus B equals C”? What would you say to a young wife, who says, “If it’s not that, what is it?”

Barbara: There’s a lot of algebra! [Laughter]

Bob: Some calculus—[Laughter]—a little geometry—

Barbara: And I don’t know algebra very well; so I can’t even give you the formula! [Laughter]

Dennis: And we’re laughing, but it’s the hard stuff of life. This is a broken world. There is a heaven, and it’s not here / it’s not now.

Barbara: Yes.

Dennis: God came, in the person of Jesus Christ, to give us an abundant life now and help us face these hardships; but it’s like the funeral you and I participated in earlier this year—a dear couple that we love greatly, who buried the body of their 15-year-old son. It’s unthinkable—

Barbara: Yes.

Dennis: —the grief of losing a child!

6:00

No couple—standing at the altar, about to say their vows to each other—can even fathom the grief, the loss, the agony, the darkness of the valley. And yet, there are a lot of our listeners—who are in it right now, or who are about to go in it, or who have been in the valley and they’ve come out the other side—they’re nodding their heads.

Bob: And one of the things I’ve heard you say before, Barbara—is knowing that those valleys are ahead—you don’t know when they’re coming / you don’t know where they are—it could be months / it could be years before you head into one—but the time to prepare your marriage and the time to get ready to walk through the valley is not when you find yourself in...